Luxury all butter mince pies

This weekend we had a extra special, early Christmas Day at our friends Jess and Ross’ house. We had the works; roast, crackers, games, chocolates, homemade mince pies and the compulsory Christmas day mini argument ( Tim fell asleep during games time, I wasn’t happy!). Jess had never made all butter mince pies before so I said we could make them on ‘Christmas day’. I took all my baking stuff round and we whipped up a fresh batch for dessert. She was a total natural and even though we had had a few bottles of Prosecoo by then, I think we did quite a good job. I usually use my mums pastry recipe for mince pies which is half butter, half lard. But this year I wanted to go all out and made luxury all butter mince pies … and boy was it worth it!

Here are a few pics of our Christmas day ….

I used a Paul Hollywood recipe which was a lovely pastry to work with and also tasted amazing. Very short and very delicious. I didn’t make my own mincemeat, I would like to one day but this time I bought a jar.

Paul’s recipe says it makes 16 mince pies but I made 24 with the recipe and that was 1 jar of mincemeat. I loveeee mincemeat and I tend to overfill my mince pies as I want lots in there. However, it bubbles when cooking and then boils over making the tops look messy so less is definitely more when it comes to beautiful mince pies. Another thing to note is the recipe said to wash with egg wash but I don’t buy isotretinoin personally like the colour the pastry goes with egg wash so I didn’t do this step.

Recipe

Place the flour and butter in a bowl and rub together to a crumb consistency. Add the sugar and the egg, and mix together. Tip out onto a lightly floured surface and fold until the pastry comes together, be careful not to over mix. Wrap the pastry in cling film and chill for 10 mins ( I left mine for an hour while we ate).

Heat the oven to 180 degrees C. Roll out the pastry to approx 3mm thick. Depending on the size of your bun tin, it will depend what size cutter to use but you want the pastry base to sit nicely inside the tin. Place the pastry bases into the bun tins. Cut and re roll until you have used up all the pastry – don’t forget you need tops as well. There are lots of options for mince pie tops and this year I tried something new as I bought a tiny little star cutter. Fill your pastry bases with mincemeat. I use just under a teaspoon in each pie. Brush the edge of each pie with a little beaten egg and add your tops.

Bake mince pies for 15-20 mins until golden brown. Leave to cool before releasing them from the bun tins and dust with icing sugar. Or if you are like me, wait about 5 minutes and eat warm from the oven with lots of clotted cream….. perfection!

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1 Comment

I mean to make my own mincemeat each year but usually end up buying some instead. It’s always best if made in advance and left to marinate (if that’s the right word) for a while and I’m never organised enough to make it in time! I love eating mince pies warm from the oven, it’s the best time to have them 🙂